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Tuesday, Nov 24, 2009
Prostitution has always been useful for people who can't find true love. Part 3 in a series.
Jul 25, 2000 | I met Mary Lou through a Washington, D.C., organization called Helping Individual Prostitutes Survive. (The six paid staff members and 40 to 70 volunteers of HIPS distribute condoms from a van parked on "the track," the desolate strip where johns and streetwalkers cruise each other. HIPS also helps prostitutes get housing, medical care and other services and, according to its brochure, "develop the skills they need to pursue self-determined, independent, productive lives."
The four HIPS workers I interviewed gave me nothing, hiding lurid details and generalizations alike behind a fence of social-science integrity. They danced around questions about rates of child abuse or lesbianism among sex workers or about legalizing prostitution with answers like "It depends on the population interviewed" or "What section of the country are you talking about?" or, over and over, "Everybody's different; you just can't generalize." They were hamstrung partly by their unwillingness to condemn their clients even indirectly. The HIPS motto could be: "We'll help you get off the streets -- not that there's anything wrong with the streets."
Their principled wriggling reflects the ethical and emotional slipperiness of prostitution. There's no denying what drives it: Men -- and some women -- want sex without emotional strings sometimes. Women -- and some men -- can make good money easing this below-the-belt loneliness. In its basic form, prostitution is victimless, perhaps benevolent.
So why is the reality so grim? We can sell almost anything else with impunity; what makes sex different? Mary Lou says her friend Crystal advised her before her first trick: "Just think of it as a one-night stand you're getting paid for." What does money change and how?
HIPS case manager Pat Novinski is a no-bullshit ex-New Yorker who has worked for more than 20 years with sex offenders, victims of sexual abuse and sex workers. Despite that long window onto cruelty, she maintains a strong, unshowy kindness and belief in humanity. When she calls me with Mary Lou's number she reassures me, "I'd never send you someone who could be hurt by getting interviewed."
Mary Lou found HIPS through a therapist -- to receive services, I assumed. But the day after the referral, Mary Lou went in to offer, not seek, help. She volunteered, she says, "to help girls on the street. That's a really tough life. I feel for them, but I can only imagine. Those girls don't have options, but I do. I could stop at any time ... I thought HIPS wouldn't let me volunteer because I don't want to stop, but Pat [Novinski] said, 'We could really benefit from someone who's still in the field.'"
Mary Lou has also tried dating guys her age, not for money. One of these young men figured out her profession and told her, "You're different from the other girls; they're all caught up in the life, but you like music and studying and school." Mary Lou says, "I liked hearing that, but now I'm afraid I am more caught up in it, and I'm trying to keep that from happening, so I don't forget my goals and dreams. So that's why I'm getting involved in HIPS."
Mary Lou's goals and dreams are understandably hazy. Her professional role models are her lobbyist and lawyer johns and underpaid angels like Novinski -- not natural booth partners at the job fair. A satisfying personal life is even more remote. "Sometimes I'll be watching a movie and I'll dream about being in love with a boy," she muses, "but then I wake up! It's not reality ... Sex is a special thing, but not so special I can't sell it."
